TO
KAYORO
Bringing Reproductive Health to a Village in Ghana
MARGARET CATLEY-CARLSON
POPULATION COUNCIL
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FROM TO KAYORO Bringing Reproductive Health to a Village in Ghana
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| Nurses on motorbikes.
I began to understand the unique quality of the Navrongo experiment when our group followed one of the community health nurses to households in the surrounding villages. She carried a portable basic health care and family planning kit strapped to her motorcycle. She provides drugs and contraceptives, gives advice about breastfeeding, and keeps track of immunizations. She is seen as a health worker, not a family planning worker. The head of a family of ten sons mentioned repeatedly how glad he was that she came to his compound. Integrated services, or at least the provision of a range of health services, is a tenet of the Cairo Consensus. I could well believe one of the Navrongo Centre’s researchers who said that "one nurse on a motorcycle outperforms a whole health center."
Men in the Navrongo region, including Kayoro, are very jealous of their power prerogatives over women (they have, after all, purchased their wives in good faith). The men were concerned, above all, with the answer to the question, "Will you, the health care provider, give family planning to my wife without my permission?" When the answer was "yes," many men expressed their fears and concerns that the service program would liberate women from their personal control.
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